Influential Authorities Research Articles

Color vision theories in nineteenth century germany between idealism and empiricism

AbstractHelmholtz and Hering are well known names in the history of physiological optics and color‐vision theory, whereas Goethe's work on color is generally regarded as standing outside the mainstream of scientific tradition. This article shows that Goethe not only stimulated the philosopher Schopenhauer to publish on color vision, but also Purkyňe and Johannes Müller, then the most influential authorities writing on sensory physiology in Germany. The latter was Helmholtz's teacher. The treatment of subjective color‐contrast phenomena by different German nineteenth‐century authors reflects the conflict between idealism and empiricism. In Germany idealism had an overwhelming influence on scientific ideas and institutions at the beginning of the last century. After 1830 this influence declined rapidly and was replaced by empiricism. But some of the idealistic stimulations remained active until the end of the century, especially in the work of Fechner and Hering.

Lenin and the Third Front

In a recent article in this journal (Lenin and Politics of Education, June 1968), Frederic Lilge, an educator at Berkeley, chose to analyze Lenin's role in formation of Soviet education from a perspective, thereby eschewing, in his words, the simple humanistic treatment in which pedagogues defend autonomy of education against encroachments of sociologists, political scientists, and social planners (p. 231). Although his approach is not novel,1 it is a particularly refreshing and revealing viewpoint in an area of history for most part dominated by pedagogical interpretations. Furthermore, subject especially lends itself to this type of analysis for a number of reasons. The philosophical and political alternatives confronting Soviet political leadership during these years determined to a large extent general direction of educational development. In addition, most influential authorities in pedagogy were first-generation revolutionaries ( politicos) instead of educational specialists.2 Finally, Professor Lilge's approach is in vogue with current emphasis in social science on studying differing educational strategies in modernizing polities.3 Soviet educational historians have themselves been deliberately reticent about politics of seminal period of their country's school system-at least until well after Stalin's death. Perhaps two best books on postrevolutionary phase of Soviet education-both of which have not been mentioned or cited by Professor Lilge-are Fedor Filipovich Korolev's Ocherki po istorii sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki, 1917-1920 (Moscow, 1958) and a book coauthored by Korolev, T. D. Korneichuk, and Z. I. Rabkin entitled Ocherki po istorii sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki, 1921-1931 (Moscow, 1961).4